


all I can think is things that are stupid

by rispacooper



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon Related, Caretaking, Chirping, Competence Kink, Derek "Nursey" Nurse is Unchill, Developing Relationship, Dorks in Love, Feelings, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Intoxication, M/M, Pining, Realization, Recreational Drug Use, Sick Character, hiding behind poetry, sexy handyman dex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 02:22:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7248274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rispacooper/pseuds/rispacooper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the Twitter feed: </p><p>Going over the river to the freshmen dorms; Dex thinks Nursey is coming down with something. Two things:<br/>1. There’s an irony somewhere in going to check up on a kid named Nurse.<br/>2. Dex is legit. furious at Nursey for not taking care of himself</p>
            </blockquote>





	all I can think is things that are stupid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vashti-lives](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=vashti-lives).



> These lovely dorks are not mine. They belong to Ngozi. :):):)

From far, far away, Derek thought he heard knocking—a really insistent knocking, like a stick against the ice or his heart in his throat. The sound was all sharp raps that made his head hurt, so he reached up with achy arms to pull a pillow over his face. The pillowcase was cool against his cheek, and it muffled the crackling, furious voice somewhere in the hall outside his door. 

He closed his eyes and exhaled when the sound faded away, and his heart went back to just keeping his blood moving. His feet were too hot where they touched each other beneath the blanket. His mouth was so dry. His arms had goosebumps. There wasn’t enough air. This cold was killing him.

Tugging the pillow up helped a little, so did pulling up the blankets until he had a soft pile to wrap his arms around so he wouldn’t die completely alone. He dragged in a rasping breath and licked his dry lips. His Chapstick was across the room. He might have a water bottle somewhere in the duffel on the floor, if he hadn’t already drunk it all this morning when he’d first collapsed into bed. If he had, then he’d have to get up and go down the hall to get something to drink. Any minute now, he was going to do that. As soon as he felt less sticky and shaky and gross. 

Minutes might have been hours. He wasn’t sure about time anymore. Maybe he _was_ sleeping, and dreaming. It would explain why he kept hearing knocking at his door, softer now, accompanied by faint, metallic clicks and the wiggling of the door handle. He had to be dreaming, because no one would be trying that hard to get in. 

He slid the pillow to the side to peer out from underneath it, and then blinked his watery eyes a few times when his _locked_ door opened and Bitty stuck his head into the room. 

Bitty looked right at Derek, then shook his head in a disappointed gesture Derek had seen from two different school principals and his family’s housekeeper. A second after that, he leaned back and said something Derek couldn’t make out before he stepped into the room. 

He marched over to the desk to set a giant, heavy-looking bag on top of it, but Derek forgot about him when Dex’s broad frame appeared in the doorway. He was in a thick sweater and an open coat, still damp with melted snow. His knitted beanie was covering the tops of his ears. 

“What—?” Derek’s voice cracked, which made him feel hotter, and stupid, because that was Poindexter at the threshold to his room, glaring at him with those lit up hazel eyes. Derek swallowed and moved his attention to Bitty. “What you are doing here?” He was croaking, but at least he could speak. 

Bitty raised his head to glance to Dex. Derek looked to Dex too. Dex hunched his shoulders and crossed his arms. 

Bitty’s voice was melted sugar. “Dex was worried you were sick. And I’m glad he was, because, Lord, you are a mess.”

Derek frowned. They couldn’t even see him, so he couldn’t be that much of a mess. “I have two blankets,” he informed both of them, then sniffed so his snot wouldn’t get all over the pillows. Dex raised his eyebrows in a way that Derek decided he resented, although it was better than Dex chirping him about something as normal as getting sick. 

Not that Dex could chirp him. He couldn’t speak at the moment. There were two shiny bits of metal between the soft press of his pale lips. They looked like screws. 

“How did you guys get in?” Derek wondered, probably later than he should have. 

“Oh.” Bitty hummed in what could have been apology or embarrassment. “Dex took the screws out of the door handle, and then we—” The gesture he made was both a _jiggle_ and a _push_. 

Maybe later, the breaking and entering was going to bother Derek, or crack him up. They could have just asked the RA for help. But this, this was direct. This was Dex, with the power of Bitty behind him. 

Derek focused on Dex with stinging eyes. “You can do that?” 

Dex scowled and yanked a screw from his mouth. A second after that, he was kneeling in front of the door and pulling a screwdriver from his back pocket. How his gaze didn’t set the door on fire was a mystery. 

Derek moved the pillow so he had an unobstructed view of Dex putting the first screw back in place. Dex’s cheeks were pink. When he took the second screw from his mouth, it had a bit of his spit on it. That was somehow one of the dirtiest things Derek had ever seen. 

“You have a screwdriver on you?” he wondered out loud when Dex stood up and slipped the tool into his coat. 

“It was in my room,” Dex growled, while also closing the door behind him. He stood with his back to it, as if he regretted ever stepping inside, but had decided to stay and suffer. 

“Your dorm room is in another building.” Derek stared at him. Everything was sideways. “Did you run over to get it?” 

“Shut up.” Dex came in, though. He came deeper into the room, with his hands at his sides and his eyebrows slashes of carroty orange embarrassment. 

“Shush.” Bitty cut off their quiet arguing by crossing in front of Dex to get to Derek’s bed. He’d taken off his coat and hat, although he’d left on the thin scarf that probably never kept him very warm. Bitty’s face was flushed, but with cold, not fury, and his eyes were the deepest, calmest kind of brown, the kind that reminded people of chocolate chip or molasses cookies made by a loved one. 

He blocked Derek’s view of Dex, which was probably not an accident, and then Derek stilled in surprise at the cool touch of Bitty’s palm to his forehead. A moment after that he pressed against it. “That feels good,” Derek tried to say, but the second he opened his mouth, Bitty popped a thermometer under his tongue. 

“People really do this when someone is sick?” Derek mumbled around the cold plastic. He had memories of doctors doing this, but during routine visits. “It’s only a cold. Isn’t it? It is, right? Did you really need to stick a thermometer in my mouth?”

Bitty was not interested in talking. “Hush.” 

“Where else was he supposed to put it?” Dex piped up, making Bitty turn, and immediately getting all of Derek’s attention again. 

Dex’s eyes went round and horrified. The scarlet blush that spread through his cheeks, and across his nose, and then crept down from his ears to his throat, probably meant his skin on fire. He’d taken off his hat and coat, so Derek got to see the fading red disappear beneath the soft collar of his olive green sweater. 

Derek inhaled through his nose. 

Dex closed his mouth with a snap, then crossed his arms before jerking into speech. “Shut up, Nurse. I meant, why even put a hand to his forehead if you’re going to take his temp anyway?”

Bitty stepped slightly to the side, and took his hand from Derek to wave Dex closer. “Come here,” Bitty instructed, in the patient tone he used when he had a frog who’d never cooked before helping him in the kitchen. 

Derek had heard that tone a lot at the beginning of the year. Dex, as far as he knew, had only had it aimed at him once, but that time it hadn’t been about cooking. 

Dex twisted his mouth unhappily, but came forward. When he was close enough, Bitty took him by the arm, pulled his sweater up to expose his forearm, and then placed his wrist gently on Derek’s forehead. 

Dex’s eyes went right to Derek’s. 

“Now look at the temperature on the thermometer,” Bitty was saying, even and steady. “It will give you a sense of what’s too hot. Pay attention to how this feels.”

Dex’s gaze flicked briefly to the thermometer, but then came back to Derek’s face. The furious lines of his eyebrows were softer, although his cheeks were still so bright that Derek’s eyes watered. 

He closed them to lean against what was possibly the one cool place on Dex’s entire freckled, pale pink, whipcord-strong body. 

Everything was very hot. 

Derek had a feeling he whimpered. 

Dex yanked his wrist away, so Derek reopened his eyes. Dex’s attention was on Bitty, who looked back and forth between them before fixing Derek with silently questioning disapproval that Derek did not deserve.

Derek blinked, then darted a glance to Dex, who was an autumn red maple, and the flying embers of a beach bonfire, and the first hint of stars in a blazing sunset. 

He let out a small, impatient breath and squeezed the bundle of blankets in his arms tighter before he moved his gaze back to Bitty. He raised his eyebrows. 

Bitty gave a start and covered his mouth with one hand. “ _Oh_.” 

Derek buried his face in his pillow, content to let either shame or the cold take him. 

Dex, of course, carried on, oblivious and stubborn. “Now what?” he demanded, with an impatient huff in his voice that made Derek peer up at him again. He had to be dreaming. This was a weed-influenced dream. Or he was hallucinating and he had something much, much worse than a cold. 

“Now you know what a fever feels like.” Bitty clucked his tongue at him while shaking the thermometer. That sounded vaguely condescending to Derek, but Dex frowned and nodded until Derek was suddenly very sure that Dex had filed away that bit of data for future use. Poindexter was an archive of useful, practical skills. 

Derek sniffled. “I have two blankets,” he told Dex again. He didn’t care what Poindexter thought… but he needed Dex to know that he’d thought to grab an extra blanket. He wasn’t helpless. 

Dex looked at him, and scowled, and then twisted around to study his room. Derek kept his room fairly neat, more to keep himself from stumbling over something than for any other reason. His books were off the floor, his desk had only a few piles of papers and notebooks on it, and his hockey gear was next to the closet. 

Dex took in all of that, then wrinkled his nose when his gaze landed back on Derek’s bed. Derek raised his head, and noticed, too late, the damp towel and sweaty t-shirt and sweatpants he’d thrown carelessly to the foot of the bed. But those were nothing compared to the gooey bundles of tissue that fallen around Derek’s body, like a chalk outline of snotty Kleenex. 

Dex’s voice was flat. “That is gross.” 

“Your face is gross,” Derek responded immediately. He thought it would get a snort, maybe another scowl, or something even more childish, but although Bitty rolled his eyes and muttered something about “precious, ridiculous frogs,” Dex didn’t seem to react at all. 

“We can’t all be you,” Dex remarked, with a full glower in place, and looked at _Bitty_ instead of at _Derek_. Derek couldn’t tell which part of that bothered him more. Dex’s face wasn’t gross. His face was alive, and alert, and speckled. And, yeah, he had kind of a turned up nose, but it just made him look more stubborn. That nose was a warning. People got distracted by the flaming hair, or the way light hit his eyes, but it was Will’s nose that announced what a determined, pigheaded asshole he could be. 

And it had a band of freckles that spanned it like a footbridge. Derek had noticed that a few weeks ago. He had not considered it beyond that moment though, at all, and whether that made Dex’s mouth a crisp, cold stream and the rest of his freckles wildflowers, or why he kept comparing Dex to natural scenes when Dex spent most of his time bent over in front of a laptop. 

“Wait.” Derek struggled to catch up with the conversation. He could feel the beaming smugness in his smile. “Did he just compliment me?” 

Dex turned to Bitty with sharp urgency. “He’s alive despite himself. We can go now.” He glanced to Derek at the end of that, and narrowed his eyes. Derek continued to grin at him, stinging eyes or not. The clench of Dex’s fists and the fierce fire of his eyes made his blood rush in his ears. 

Then Bitty said, “Shush,” and Dex _shushed_. He took a breath and lowered his shoulders as he released it. He opened his hands and slid them against his thighs. 

“Why?” Derek complained out loud, his grin falling away. He felt like he was speaking very slowly. Dex was nice for Bitty, to Bitty. To everyone, really. Even to Shitty when they were debating. And yet Derek was getting the crossed arms and the scrunchy face and Dex looking at Bitty instead of at him. 

Derek frowned, then felt under the pillows until he found his phone. He swiped the screen, then tapped out a message. His sense of satisfaction at sending it only grew stronger when he heard the buzz from Dex’s pocket. 

Dex pulled out his phone, squinted at it, then _finally_ looked at Derek again. “What the hell is wrong with you? I’m right here.”

“ _Yeah_ , you are,” Derek agreed, and stretched out a little, arching from the bed as he wriggled away from the blankets. The air on his bare shoulders made him shiver. 

Dex was all wide eyes for a moment, then pink suspicion. “Nurse, are you high right now?” He didn’t wait for answer. “You’re sick, and you got _high_?” 

“Didn’t have cold medicine,” Derek explained himself. “It was just a little bit of weed butter from the guy next door.”

“Weed _butter_?” Bitty seemed offended to the core. Dex’s annoyance intensified, which was so not chill. Derek had only been using what had been on hand. 

“Annie’s was too far.” Derek decided he also resented having to justify this to Dex’s scowling, pretty face. It was weird enough explaining himself to Bitty, who was barely older than him. Poindexter had no right to question anything he did. 

But he was quiet as he went on. “There was no tea in the common room. I used to get tea when I was sick, when I was little. Tea with honey, not sugar. I didn’t have that either. But maybe I’ll get some, and Dex can stir it for me with his little finger.” The idea of Dex sweet enough to substitute for sugar made Derek snort and then laugh, and then cough a little. 

It ended in a groan. “My head hurts.”

“My sweet baby frogs,” Bitty said, but it didn’t sound like a compliment. He went to the desk, and his big bag, and pulled out aspirin and a water bottle. Which of course he’d brought with him. 

Derek was trying to sit up before Bitty was back at his bedside. He took the aspirin, then grabbed for the water bottle with both hands. He got a large swallow, then coughed and sent droplets of water down his chin. 

He tried to wipe his face and straighten up at the same time, then snorted into the water bottle and made a bigger mess. “I can’t control my thirst,” he confessed, laughing until Dex said, “Christ,” and put a hand over his to steady it. 

Looking up at him was a mistake. Derek drank from the bottle Will was holding for him and watched the different stages of Dex’s blush as it colored the shell of his ear. 

Dex kept his attention elsewhere. “I knew it,” he muttered. “I knew he’d gone too quiet in the group chat. Probably let himself waste away in here for the past two days. He’d die of the fucking flu like it’s 1917 and he’s too dumb to go to the campus clinic and get aspirin and Vick’s.”

“Hey.” Derek stopped letting himself be distracted by all the colors of Will. “What if it _is_ the flu? Dex.” He took his hand out from under Dex’s just to grip his wrist. “Dex, what if it’s serious? Will you stay by my side, in sickness and in health, forever and ever, till death do us part?”

Dex snapped his head around to gape at him. 

Bitty coughed, then bustled forward. “Y’all should be grateful I have a policy of not tweeting _everything_ I hear,” he remarked briskly. “Nursey, you aren’t dying. It’s not the flu—probably. You have a cold, and then you got high instead of drinking fluids or eating or sleeping properly.” He pushed the water bottle back up, then slipped away again, which forced Dex to continue holding it for Derek to use. 

But this time, Dex moved his hands, and suddenly he and Derek were no longer touching. Derek swallowed and observed the way Dex didn’t seem to know where to look. His eyes flitted up and down, to Derek’s mouth and then to his hands around the bottle. His eyelashes came down against his cheeks 

Derek sighed and pulled away. “I could have gotten my own water,” he pointed out, with his lips and tongue wonderfully wet. “I’m not helpless.” 

“Shut up and drink,” Dex told him sternly, before placing his hand over Derek’s again and tipping the bottle up until Derek emptied it. His touch felt hotter than before. It was probably Derek’s fever transferring heat. 

He stuck the empty bottle on the stand by the bed, then cleared his throat. A second later he was brushing the tissue piles off the bed. The bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed was mesmerizing. “Nurse, that had better be snot in these, I swear to God.”

The laugh burst out of Derek’s mouth, and made him slide back down against the warm and cool cotton of his pillowcases. He got comfortable on his back before looking up into stunned hazel eyes. “Dex, what _have_ you been picturing?” 

Bitty came over with the trashcan to collect the Kleenex from the floor, but he used a clean tissue to do it. His cheeks had a rosy tint that was nice, but not vivid, burning heat that made Derek restlessly push at his blankets. Bitty glanced at Derek, and then at his chest, before whispering, “Oh Lord.” His face got a touch rosier, like the glow on a peach. 

“There’s a blush for want,” Derek informed him softly. “And a blush for shan’t, and a blush for having done it.” Derek flicked his attention to Dex’s very still form, and the stark red at his cheekbones, and chose to pretend he hadn’t looked up poems about blushing for one very specific reason. “There’s a blush for thought, and a blush for nought, and—” He cut himself off before he could add, _and a blush for just begun it_. Nothing had begun. Nothing would. So he sighed. “Too bad Dex doesn’t like poetry.” 

Dex worked his jaw. “I never said I didn’t like—” He stopped there, then crossed his arms. “Should I go?” He nodded toward Bitty, but seared Derek with a glare. 

Derek leaned toward him. He felt a pillow slide to the floor in the process, but refused to look away first. “How about a limerick?” 

“Now, you stop chirping Dex.” Bitty picked up the pillow and thrust it at him. Derek shoved it down and used it to hold his head up, his cheek pressed against it. 

“Should I chirp you instead?” Derek offered, eyes on Bitty. Bitty puts his hands to his face. His lips made a soft, startled circle. “You’re pretty when you blush, Bits.”

The strangled sound that came out of Dex would have been compelling even if he hadn’t let his mouth fall open. 

Derek turned toward him, waiting with his arms curled around the pillow, because Dex knew about him, he _knew_ , he had to, even if he’d never seen it, the sheltered idiot.

He met Dex’s stare at the exact moment Dex’s eyebrows came together in a slash of what was probably furious, judgmental disapproval. 

Derek was hot, and his thoughts felt sticky, and that was absolutely the reason he arranged himself on his side and then tugged the blankets down to his hip. 

Dex’s eyes were coronas, pupils dark, the hint of color startling. He took a breath, then another. No words followed them. 

“What do you think, Bitty?” Derek wondered, his voice a croak again because Dex wasn’t looking away from his face, which meant Dex wasn’t _looking_ and he never would. 

Bitty was smug. “I think I was right when I thought you couldn’t tell the difference between chirping and flirting.”

Derek blinked and turned to him. “What?” 

Dex looked over at him too. “What?” 

Bitty might have had his hands pressed to his pink cheeks, but he had a tiny smile on his face too. He nodded toward the bag on Derek’s desk, then at Dex. “Dex, honey, can you help him sit up?” A second after that, he stepped over to the desk to pull something from the bag. 

Derek swung his gaze back to Dex. He thought about pushing, chirping again, then pulling the blanket down to show them both that he might have pulled his clothes off when he’d gotten too hot, but he’d left his briefs on. Dex was safe, if that’s what he was worried about, if that was why he wasn’t moving. 

He didn’t like that idea, didn’t want to think of Dex afraid to touch him. It made him feel small and cold. Because for all that they argued, and all the dumb things Dex had said, and still said, he’d never thought Dex wouldn’t want to be around him anymore once he knew for sure. 

He watched Dex’s expression shift from surprise to reluctance to annoyance, almost in time to the deepening of the color in his skin. And then Dex leaned down, and Derek moved up to reach for him. 

His skin was chilled on the surface, so much so that he shivered when Dex’s fingers trailed over his stomach. He didn’t think he was breathing, but he could hear the sound over Dex’s shocked huff, and the rustle of his blankets. 

A hand settled uncertainly at his hip, then pushed down around to the small of his back. Dex’s other hand was warm between the sheets and Derek’s skin. He was biting his lip. 

Derek reached up to grab a fistful of Dex’s sweater and feel his shoulder blade under his hand. When he stretched up, his face was almost at Dex’s neck, and when Dex gently, carefully, set him back against the headboard, Derek could breathe him in. 

His sense of smell was limited at the moment, but Dex was as clean and wholesome as he’d always suspected. 

“Like soap and the snow,” Derek said, content and warm. “Fresh air bite, sting my lungs. It hurts. I can’t breathe in deep enough.”

Dex angled his head away to look at him. His eyes were close. So was his face, his nose and his open mouth, all those freckles. Derek was floating. “Dex,” he whispered, as softly as he knew how. 

“I hope you’re hungry!” Bitty called out, a thousand miles away, and just like that, Dex’s arms were no longer around him and Dex was several feet from the bed. 

Bitty laid a paper towel onto Derek’s lap—after first firmly tugging the blankets back up to Derek’s waist—and then handed him a bowl and a spoon. 

The soup was still steaming. 

Derek stared at it blankly, the miracle of it, and then the scent of chicken stock and garlic made his stomach growl. “This smells bomb. Well, what I can smell smells bomb.”

Dex snorted, although when Derek looked at him, Dex was studying the floor. 

Derek got a spoonful of chicken noodle, which was hot and felt amazing on his throat. “Thanks,” he mumbled around his second mouthful, and tipped the bowl to the side. 

“Careful!” Dex and Bitty shouted at him at the same time, reaching out as if Derek couldn’t catch it before it spilled and burned him in a very sensitive and important area. 

Dex sighed, noisily, pointedly, like an asshole, and Derek looked up in time to see him exchanging a look with Bitty that wasn’t fair. It felt even less fair when Dex sighed—again—before grabbing the back of his desk chair and dragging it over to the side of the bed. 

He picked it up and set it down, then plopped into it to stare stubbornly at Derek. “This is embarrassing for both of us.” 

“I’m not helpless.” Derek felt as if he’d said this before. 

“You can’t eat cereal without someone watching over you.” Dex rolled his eyes, but the curve of his mouth, or maybe it was the difficulty he had in meeting Derek’s eyes, took the insult out of it. 

Bitty was smiling as he tapped out something on his phone. Maybe he _was_ tweeting this. 

Derek should have batted his eyelashes, or cooed something about the kindness of strangers. But he didn’t move. He let Dex take the bowl and spoon from him. “It’s just a cold,” he insisted. “Anyone can get a cold.” 

Dex thinned his lips. “Yeah, but seems a little more likely when idiots are out carousing all night instead of studying.” 

“ _Carousing_?” Derek narrowed his eyes. So Dex found out Derek wasn’t straight and suddenly he was about policing his behavior? “I can spend my nights however I want. I can’t believe you’re going to pull this judging shit.” 

“Did you even wear a scarf?” Dex growled at him. “Not that hipster neckwarmer crocheted thing, but a real scarf? A real hat? It snowed the past three nights, you complete dumbass.” He jabbed the air with the spoon, then tossed his head. “Did you bother to sleep? Feed yourself?” He was getting louder. “Do you just expect other people to take care of you? You—”

“No.” The single, soft word from Derek made Dex stop in the middle of his old man rant. For a few moments, his expression was bewildered, and then the surprising fury that replaced it was too much, because Will fought and argued for the things he cared about. “Were you really worried about me?” The weed or the cold had kept Derek from remembering that sooner. 

Dex was frozen, his lips parted without any words to form. Derek felt like he’d stolen a kiss. “Bitty said so,” Derek added, with something terrible rising his chest, audible in his voice. “You wouldn’t say Bitty was a liar, would you?” 

A startled breath left Dex. He twitched, as if he would have crossed his arms if he hadn’t been holding Bitty’s soup. “You can’t be trusted to look after yourself. And your _friends_ certainly don’t seem to know anything but poems.”

He’d placed more emphasis on _friends_ than _poems_ , which was normally where all his teasing disdain would be while he fussed over Derek reading too much, taking such an interest in something Dex couldn’t get his hands all over and fix, if necessary. He knew Derek had money, said he hated it, and then worried about Derek being unable to find a job related to poetry. 

The lightness in Derek’s chest rose to his thoughts. “But you’re my friend. Sort of.” 

Bitty made a sound like a tiny hiccup. 

Dex glared over at him, then seemed to realize he was glaring at Bitty, and stopped. He glanced to Derek. “I didn’t mean that kind of—you hungry? Bitty made this just for you, you know.” 

“Dex helped!” Bitty chimed in.

“Thanks, Bitty.” Derek had seen Dex in the kitchen at Thanksgiving. He wasn’t a chef, but he’d chopped vegetables and done the dishes with practiced ease. “You were worried?” he asked again. Some water might have made his throat less tight. 

Dex gave the soup a stir, then shot a look Bitty’s way, which must have been ignored, because he faced Derek and grunted at him. “You’re a pain in my ass. So you’re something.” 

His glare was defiant, as if he was expecting a harsh reply. 

Derek had nothing. He literally had nothing. His mind had cleared, his body had left the bed. He couldn’t tell if it was too much weed, or the fever. 

“You hungry?” Dex demanded at last, shifting in his chair, glowing redder and redder the longer Derek stayed quiet. 

Derek leaned forward, and got soup as a reward. Dex was careful. He scraped the bottom of the spoon against the edge of the bowl, then inched forward to nudge the spoon against Derek’s lips. That’s where his gaze went. The scowl above his eyes didn’t matter. It was focus. It was all Dex’s attention on getting small mouthfuls of soup into Derek to make him better. 

Derek licked his lips between each one, and he thought it might have been sexy, or he might have tried to make it sexy any other time, but it didn’t feel sexy. The warmth of the soup made its way down to his stomach, but just above that was a hollow space, anxious and hungry. Dex locked eyes with him, and then looked away, and then stared at his mouth, and Derek felt a sting at his eyes that he was going to blame on his cold. 

He stopped and turned his face away before he could take another bite. He realized he was clutching at his blankets, that his heart was racing so hard he could feel it through the haze of shock and warmth. He was going to cry, which he could not do, not in front of Dex, not even when Dex made a worried face and put the soup on the nightstand. 

“What’s wrong?” His voice was so quiet Derek had to hold tighter to the blankets. “Was it too much soup for now? I’ve seen you eat like, a pie and a half when high before, Nurse, so this thing must be bad.” If it was a chirp, it was the softest chirp in existence. “Here.” Dex took the paper towel from Derek’s lap and dabbed at his chin before tossing the paper towel to the floor. “You need a shave, too. And a shower. Don’t expect me to help you there,” he teased, and then waited, but the feeling in Derek’s chest still wouldn’t let him speak. “Hey, Bitty?” Dex called out in a worried tone. 

_Bitty._ Derek met Bitty’s eyes gratefully the moment Bitty came into view. 

Bitty paused for whatever he saw in Derek’s face. Derek hoped it was chill, but knew it wasn’t when Bitty gasped. “Sometimes, when people don’t feel well, they can be a little emotional.” Bitty put a question mark in his voice, so Derek nodded. Despite the way his heart was racing, Bitty laid a hand on Dex’s shoulder, calming. “But he’s okay. Aren’t you, Derek? You’re with friends, and we’ll take care of you.” 

A small sound escaped him, and then Bitty took his hand, which somehow made the feeling worse. “Did you think you had to do this alone? Is that why you didn’t tell anyone you were sick?” Bitty firmed his voice. “Your team’s got your back, Derek Nurse. Say it for me.”

“My team’s got my back.” It hurt, rasping out of his dry lungs. 

Dex stared at Bitty in starry-eyed wonder. Derek didn’t have time to burn with jealousy, or wonder about feeling jealousy at all, because Bitty took Dex’s hand and put it in his, and then patted them both. “Sit with him for a while, won’t you, Dex, honey?” Bitty asked, but it wasn’t a suggestion. “I’ll clean up.”

Derek’s gaze fell to their hands. Dex’s probably did too, unless he was still staring at Bitty. 

Derek didn’t like that idea, although Bitty was cute. Dex was… Dex, and crushing on Bitty, which didn’t make sense, because Dex wasn’t for Bitty, even though he could help him in the kitchen, and fix things for him, and generally be good at things Derek would never master. 

“A sonnet’s not a pie.” Derek sank into his pillows, because Dex’s fingers laced with his let him. 

“What?” Dex shook his head. “You are so messed up right now.”

“Yeah,” Derek agreed, and stared at their hands some more. His head hurt. His chest ached. He wasn’t going to cry. “Will… thanks.” 

“Thanks?” Dex’s scowl wasn’t even a little bit angry. He wasn’t flushed. He just looked confused, and adorable. 

Derek was so gone. “I didn’t expect this.” Especially not from Dex. But maybe, maybe he should have. 

When he was sober and well, the very idea would be terrifying. Derek had a not-unreasonable fear of people who put that kind of sticker on their laptops, who were proud enough to announce they stood with people who hated people like him. But right now, Dex’s warm hand was over his. 

Then he sniffed, and Dex took his hand away. He reached for a tissue, which he threw it at Derek’s face. It tickled when it landed. 

“Thanks.” Derek wiped up snot as gingerly as he could. “My nose is sore.” 

“Big baby.” Dex sat back, pleased enough to grin. Derek was happy enough to glare at him. It was good to be back someplace familiar. It helped him ignore the growing panic behind his ribs, the rising warmth that his bones couldn’t contain. 

“I’m not forcing you to be here,” Derek tossed back at him through the veil of tissue. 

He thought it was funny, but Dex gave a jolt and then straightened. A frown—a real one—returned. “Fine. I’ll go.” 

“No!” Derek almost fell off the bed reaching for him, and the split second after he realized it, and how he must look, and what he must sound like, was some kind of nightmare. It had to be. 

Then Bitty was there again, his angel, his Georgian, pie-making savior, to lean down and gently push him back to the bed and eye him critically. “Someone ought to watch him for a spell,” he remarked, as if he wasn’t staring Derek dead in the face while talking. “Make sure he sleeps and gets more fluids. I bet you did the same with your siblings when they were sick, right, Dex?”

Derek knew without looking that Dex had sat his ass back down in the chair. 

That was like magic. Bitty had Dex-calming magic… or not, because Dex was always calm for Bitty and the others. But Bitty seemed to have a special key, as if he knew something Derek didn’t. 

“Yeah, sure,” Dex told Bitty, so bright-eyed he might as well have been ogling Jack’s ass. 

Derek stared hard at him. “Hey.”

Dex gave him an exasperated look. “What?”

“Dex.” Derek said it softly, to watch the annoyance and confusion fight it out in Dex’s eyebrows. “Dex. Hey, Dex.” 

“What? Are you dying?” Dex frowned but swept a concerned look over him anyway. 

Derek smiled at him. “Dex, hold my hand again.” He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers, and liked how Dex studied them for a moment, as if he was thinking about it. Then Bitty did something, and Dex raised his head to watch him. “Hey, Dex,” Derek said again, slightly sing-song. “Would you read to me?”

“Read to you?” Dex repeated in disbelief. But his attention was on Derek once more, and the warmth continued to blossom in Derek’s chest.

“De-ex.” Derek continued to sing it. “Thank you for cleaning my bed and bringing me food.”

The corner of Dex’s mouth came up. That was better, that was so much better than anything else. “Just rest, you idiot.” 

It wasn’t much of a chirp, but Derek gave a contented hum and nestled into his pillows and blankets once again. He tugged the covers up to his chin and watched Dex smile for another few moments. 

He could hear Bitty’s voice. “…Keep an eye on his temperature, but he seems fine. Let him sleep, and then make him eat more when he wakes up. Text me if you need anything.”

Bitty was shivering even before he finished buttoning up his coat and slipped out the door. 

Derek watched the door close, then blinked. “Bitty’s leaving?” 

“He’s gone.” Dex squinted at him. “How messed up _are_ you?” 

“So we’re alone?” Derek was not hallucinating, and he was not dreaming. He was alone with Dex in his room. He was in his underwear. Everything was hot, and his nose wouldn’t stop running. “Tissue?” he begged, and got another one tossed at his face. He accepted it graciously. “Seriously, I hate my nose right now.”

“Tomorrow it’ll be worse.” Dex’s version of sympathy was saying horrible things in a gentle voice. “At least you can still breathe out of it.” He threw Derek another tissue, then bent down to pull the trashcan closer. 

“You’re going to get sick too,” Derek told him, although he absolutely didn’t want him to leave. “You should probably wash your hands at least.” 

“Bitty left hand-sanitizer in the bag.” Dex gave a small, proud sneer. “It’d take more than this anyway.” 

Because Dex was hardy peasant stock, or something, was probably what he expected Derek to say, so he could comment on the sheltered, delicate rich. Derek bit his lip and said nothing, so, after a while, Dex pulled out his phone with a rough, not exactly disappointed noise, and focused on that. 

If a few touches wouldn’t get Dex sick, a kiss would probably do it. Derek spent a few minutes watching Dex play on his phone while he thought about kissing him. It was different to imagine it now, less about fucking him quiet, and more about how Dex didn’t seem to know what to do with softness from him. There was something appealing about the press of his palm along Dex’s skull, the brush of his hair through Derek’s fingers. The tilt of his head, the angle of his chin as he gazed up, Derek’s hand cradling the back of his head as he leaned down for a kiss. 

Would Dex wait patiently? Or laugh? Or glare and dare him to kiss him already? Had he ever spent an afternoon trading small kisses that went nowhere? Could he learn to? 

Derek caught his breath. 

Dex glanced up. “What?” 

“What?” Derek echoed huskily. 

He got a beautiful frown for it. “You going to repeat everything I say?”

He didn’t know how to answer that. “Maybe?”

Dex shook his head. “Dex is my favorite.” 

“Dex is my favorite,” Derek repeated seriously. He had no idea why that would make Dex thin his mouth, as if that pissed him off more.

Derek was tired and stoned, and he really wanted to kiss Dex, but he knew he wasn’t going to ever get that chance. That was okay with the bloom of heat in his chest, but made the hunger worse. “Hey, Dex?” He paused when Dex did. “ _The Swallow_.” 

“What.” It wasn’t a question. Dex’s shoulders stiffened. 

“ _The Swallow_ ,” Derek said again, because it had only been a few days. “After that party. Someone said you were in it.” 

“So?” Dex challenged, with his chin at a hostile angle. 

“ _Carousing_.” Derek gave that word back to him. 

The angle of Dex’s chin became less hostile. He swallowed, then forgot his phone in his lap. “I was… I wasn’t!” he insisted defensively. “ _I_ didn’t wake up on the ground, after being blackout shitfaced, like at every other party.”

“Where did you wake up?” The question was genuine. Derek honestly had no clue about most of that night. 

Dex closed his mouth with a snap, then rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “I don’t like to not be ready—not knowing. I was surprised.” 

“Dex?” Derek tried, he really did. “Maybe it’s the cold, but I don’t follow. At all.” 

“I don’t like to not be ready.” Dex didn’t meet his eye. “But I wasn’t, not for… that.” 

Derek wondered if he was referring to the levels of partying, or whatever he’d actually done. Derek didn’t know what that was. He’d heard Dex had been in _The Swallow_ afterward, but he hadn’t been feeling well by then and hadn’t looked. He was going to, though, at some point.

“Either way, it’s fine,” he murmured, after a while of watching Dex glare at his phone without touching it. “You remember it anyway. And you didn’t get sick. So you did better than me.”

He gave Derek a glance that was almost cautious. “No,” Dex said softly. “No, not really.”

Then he hunched his beautifully broad shoulders. People did that because they wanted to curl in on themselves and disappear, and hide their soft places so no one could ever touch them again. Other people did the opposite, and pretended not to care about the number of wounds they received. 

“Well, next time you’ll be ready, right?” Derek said on a slow exhale, as if that would make the tension leave Dex.

Dex startled. “Yeah, uh. Next time.” He glanced at Derek again. “It might be different, though. When I’m ready.” 

Derek gave him an encouraging smile, because anything that made Dex so uncertain had to be incredible. But of course, instead of being comforted, or smiling back, Dex grumbled to himself and then sighed. “Fine. Whatever.”

He was so disgruntled about whatever it was, Derek had to bite his tongue to keep from saying anything. He wanted to touch his head, so bad, to ruffle his hair while it was long enough to ruffle, and then pull him close, and kiss his freckled cheek. Dex would be like a heater with all that blushing. 

He was blushing now, although Derek was certain that, weed or no weed, he hadn’t said any of that out loud. Yet Dex continued to turn red. He bounced a knee in agitation, and had to clutch at his phone to keep it from falling. “I just wasn’t expecting any of _this_.” He put way too much energy into that word. 

“Dex.” Derek lifted his hand. “Chill.” 

Dex gave him a brief, but still murderous, look. Then he took a deep breath. “I’m letting that go, because you’re sick.” He stopped, then rushed on. “But I _am_ chill. I _was_ chill. I… am chill.”

He’d walked across campus in the snow to check on Derek because he’d thought he might be sick.

Derek didn’t say it out loud. Because Dex would deny it or pick a fight, and the reality of it—Dex had done that, and more, for him—was too much to be voiced right now. Derek left it in his chest to soothe the anxiety. He stared at Dex until he had to say something. 

“So then what was Bitty tweeting?” he wondered, completely innocent until Dex shot him a panicked look. 

“Nothing!” Dex nearly shouted it, and moved faster than Derek could to toss his phone away and out of reach. It landed on his coat on top of Derek’s desk. Derek glared at him, offended more than curious because how bad could it be? But Dex wasn’t looking at him anyway. Or, he wasn’t looking at his face. 

His gaze skipped over Derek’s chest, went down to the blankets, then veered wildly around the room when he saw that Derek had caught him peeking. 

Dex had been looking. 

Derek collapsed onto the pillows with the blankets still gathered at his hips. He put an arm up over his head and waited for Dex to finally look back at him. 

He did, with a grim, determined set to his jaw. Then he blinked and squinted, before he grabbed another tissue and threw it at him. 

Derek expelled a loud, pained sigh at the ceiling, but wiped his runny nose. He was too high, too sick, and imagining things. 

Dex silently held up the trash can. When Derek crumpled up the tissue and threw it in, Dex grinned. “Teamwork.”

There were worse things than Dex’s sunny grin, so Derek smiled back. He hadn’t really failed, since he hadn’t really tried. There was nothing to try for, he reminded himself, as if he wasn’t aching. Nothing except this, which was also good. Dex wanted this too, fragile peace and careful concern for one another. He’d broken into Derek’s room for it, and that was so not chill, and yet Derek didn’t even mind. 

He tugged the covers back over himself. “You going to go soon?” He hoped that didn’t come out as sad as he thought it did. 

Dex’s surprise was reassuring. “I said I’d stay, didn’t I?” 

He hadn’t. But Derek let it go, because Dex was staying. “You won’t be bored when I fall asleep?”

“C is gonna bring me my books,” Dex answered easily, then took a second to consider him. His eye roll was somehow _cute_. “I’ll be here to reheat your soup when you wake up starving and bitchy, don’t worry.” 

Derek didn’t even comment on the sexist, gendered insult that Shitty would have immediately called him on, because that was poetry. That sentence was the most romantic thing he’d ever heard. He dragged in a breath, and watched Dex watch him, and the words just spilled out. “I would rather look at you than at all the portraits in the world.” 

That slow flush was magnificent and all-consuming. Dex had to feel like he was on fire. 

But he was a sweet, flustered, red candied apple. “I… what? Is that—? Oh, shut up, Nurse. You aren’t funny. Go to sleep.” 

“I am,” Derek lied. Dex had come here for him. Friends or teammates, or maybe, maybe something else, that was the most loving thing he could have done. Derek was going to stare at this boy until sleep finally took him.

“No, you’re not.” Dex looked toward his phone almost desperately, then back at Derek. “You’re staring.” His freckles nearly disappeared when he flushed this deep. 

Derek missed them. “The sky is better with stars in it.”

“Huh?” Dex tossed his head. “What?” 

“Red hair is my life long sorrow,” Derek went on, because he would have been just fine thinking he was only attracted to Will and never admitting it was so much worse than that. 

“ _What_?” Dex drew his eyebrows together and stared across the short distance at Derek. Derek held very still while Dex studied him, and probably replayed his words, and then gave up with a frustrated stab at the air. “You should sleep. You’re losing it.”

“There is a hole in the world,” Derek recited mournfully.

Dex immediately leaned forward to press his wrist to Derek’s forehead. “I don’t think you’re hot enough to be delirious. Wait—is this poetry?” 

Derek shut his eyes. “Yes.” 

Dex’s soft little huff of amusement only made Derek’s blood race. So did his light, teasing words. "Less poems, more sleep.”

Always so practical. Derek could tell him about every new, not-new, jabbing, painful feeling, and all the warm ones too, and Dex still would never know. And if he did, he’d think it was the cold talking. 

Derek exhaled. “This is another of those things I’m always forgetting to tell you, or don’t choose to tell you, or I tell you but only in the same way.”

There was a moment of silence that made Derek finally look at him. 

Dex’s eyes, flaming in the light, flicked over his face as he slowly withdrew his hand. “You could try telling me later, in normal words.”

For a chirp, it was slow. Maybe it wasn’t a chirp. Derek didn’t know what it was, but he closed his eyes again. “I forgot you don’t like poetry.”

“I never said I didn’t like it.” Dex argued, probably for the sake of arguing. “I just don’t get it.”

“And you don’t like not knowing things.” Derek reopened his eyes, then rolled onto his side to look at him. The scowl was not as intimidating as it once was. Maybe to people who didn’t know Dex, but Derek studied it in fascination. “I could… I could help with that.” 

Something uncertain flickered through Dex’s expression. “Yeah, sure,” he agreed, with this little huff that didn’t mean anything with the force of all that lit up hazel focused on Derek. 

“Whatever,” Derek answered, his mouth dry again. His pulse thundered in his ears. 

“You actually going to sleep now?” Dex went on a moment later, a new shade of pink, sunrise on the coast. 

“I am,” Derek insisted. 

“Closing your eyes would help,” Dex insisted, grumpy, or embarrassed, a maybe just confused at being stared at. How had no one ever looked at him like this before? There was no one else like him. Derek ought to hate him, and at first he had, and maybe he still did, but only because for everything else he was, he was also this. He was _here_ , and he was going to stay.

“I don’t think your face is gross,” Derek told him, in normal words, with an anxious hitch in the middle. Then he slipped back into poetry. “I like what it does. I like its hows.” 

The widening of Dex’s eyes was the strike of a match. The strangled sound he bit back, the first crisp crunch of fall leaves underfoot. He looked at Derek and didn’t move, and Derek left the rest unspoken, and closed his eyes. 

After a while he heard Dex settle into the chair, and then the quiet hush of his breathing, and then the soft exhalation of, “ _It’s hows_?” like someone touching their mouth after a kiss. 

Derek kicked out beneath the covers, restless and too-warm, but content to lie like that for hours. 

 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the things Nurse is quoting at Dex are (in my head) lines he's written, at some point. The rest are from actual poems (and one from Anne of Green Gables, just to amuse myself). If anyone is interested, here they are. (I am so sorry for my nerdiness) 
> 
> O Blush Not So!/Sharing Eve's Apple (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/o-blush-not-so/) by Keats
> 
> Having a Coke with You (https://mappingthemarvellous.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/having-a-coke-with-you/) by Frank O'Hara
> 
> There is a Hole in the World (http://a-thousand-words.tumblr.com/post/72228217762/where-you-used-to-be-there-is-a-hole-in-the) by Edna St Vincent Millay
> 
> Domestic (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/49210) by Carl Phillips
> 
> i like my body when it is with your (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/10/14) by e.e. cummings


End file.
